Consider you have to complete a UI content review for the product you work on. Wouldn’t things be easier if you could use Acrobat text-edit-markup features to highlight the relevant content embedded in images? Of course, you can always add a sticky note in an approximate location, but that isn’t quite as effective!

So how do you enable PDF text edits for embedded text? Here’s how:

Paste the screenshot in your favorite word-processing or layout tool. For example, FrameMaker.

Last year, I had an opportunity to help automate the registration process for the STC India Conference 2009. I created a PDF form using LiveCycle Designer and designed a simple workflow around it.

The presentation at this link discusses this workflow, together with guidelines for both form authors and end users. A snapshot of the workflow is captured in the schematic below.

Some 475 delegates registered using the form without any glitches.

Conference registration is, of course, just one of the examples of the numerous processes that you can automate using LiveCycle Designer. The tool is easy-to-use and provides templates and boilerplate forms that you can customize for your requirements. Through custom JavaScript/FormCalc scripting, you can easily fine-tune any aspect of the PDF form. For example, in the form in question, I used JavaScript to allow “conditional access” to fields. Thus, “field A” accepts input only when “field B” has a certain value, and so on.

If you are looking for the right learning resources to get started with LiveCycle Designer, refer to Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES2 Help (HTML). If you are looking for more information about the product or want to download a free trial copy, visit this page.

Creating a final, print-quality PDF from FrameMaker documents can be an involved, multi-step process. We thought it would be useful to capture all relevant considerations and steps in a single handbook that could be immediately put to use in real-world situations.

The following sections are included in this handbook:

Relevant scenario

Prerequisites

Important considerations

Equip yourself with relevant details

Stage 0: Prepare the content

Stage 1: Clean up the source

Stage 2: Prepare the book and create PDF

Stage 3: Test the PDF

Stage 4: Prepare the PDF for publication

Stage 5: Optimize the PDF in Acrobat

Appendix: Best practices for using conditional text

Appendix: Keeping track of content changes across versions in a collaborative environment